In this series we’ll take a fresh look at resources and how they are used. We’ll go beyond natural resources like air and water to look at how efficiency in raw materials can boost the bottom line and help the environment. We’ll also examine the circular economy and design for reuse — with an eye toward honoring those resources we do have.

While changes at home can’t solve the many environmental crises we face today, they can sure help. Through this series, we’ll explore how initiatives like curbside compost pick-up, rebates on compost bins, and efficient appliances can help families reduce their impact without breaking the bank.

Despite decades -- centuries even -- of global efforts, slavery can still be found not just on the high seas, but around the world and throughout various supply chains. Through this series on forced labor, sponsored by C&A Foundation, we’ll explore many different types of bonded and forced labor and highlight industries where this practice is alive and well today.

In this series we examine how companies should respond to national controversy like police violence and the BLM movement to best support employees and how can companies work to improve equality by increasing diversity in their ranks directly.

Compost is often considered a panacea for the United States’ tremendous food waste problem. Indeed, composting is a much better option than putting spoiled food in a garbage can destined for a landfill.

The Heritage Foundation-backed National Center for Policy Analysis pumps out a steady stream of misinformation about climate change, continuously reinforcing the smokescreen behind which billions of dollars in fossil fuel profits continue to be made. Generally speaking, it’s best to ignore them, figuring that giving them attention only helps them do their job. But this latest item is so egregious, that someone needs to call them out on it.

Numerous international aid agencies, as well as ratings services like Standard & Poors, have stated that the areas of South Asia and Southeast Asia are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of global warming.

Their source is none other than Craig Idso, a former executive of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company. Idso reports that South Asian food productivity has increased 7.5-fold in the past years, and attributes that, without evidence, to the increased presence of carbon dioxide in the air.

The increase in agricultural productivity is real enough. It is sometimes referred to as the Green Revolution. Most scholars attribute the Asian increase to four things: fertilizers, technology, labor and livestock. Irrigation has also played a major role in other regions. Indeed, just as in the period from 1980 to 2007, the utilization of fertilizers and tractors increased more than three-fold in places like Vietnam and Thailand recently, which is in line with the increase in productivity. None of them attribute it to the presence of increased CO2 in the air. Attempting to make this connection sounds a lot like what Idso has previously written about climate science, saying, “A weak short-term correlation between CO2 and temperature proves nothing about causation.” So where is the cause-and-effect linkage here?

Indeed, there have been some laboratory studies, which this brief fails to mention, showing increased plant growth — under controlled conditions — in a CO2-rich environment. The effect, which has been small, seems to favor arid conditions. But what happens when you take those conditions out to the field seems to be quite different. The enhancing effect of the extra carbon seems to preferentially affect indigenous, local species — otherwise known as weeds.

But that’s okay. After all, there are folks who are happy to sell you more herbicides. But, unfortunately, there are other issues that come into play.

For one thing, increasing the amount of CO2 in the air also increases the plants’ need for water and fertilizer. Fossil records show that in earlier times, increased CO2 led to sharply increased insect predation of plants. For some reason, plants grown under these conditions attract more insects. Hmmm. This is starting to sound like an agricultural chemical company’s dream come true. But it’s not so good for the rest of us. Then, of course, there are the climate-related impacts: heat, drought, shifting growing seasons, migration of both defender and pest species.

The World Bank has also studied the issue, and they are extremely concerned about these vulnerable regions. In particular, they cite concerns over food security in sub-Saharan Africa, devastation of coastal areas in Southeast Asia, and food production impacts due to fluctuating rain patterns in South Asia.

Perhaps, instead of trying to sweep the issue under the rug and convince people to ignore any pangs of conscience about people starving overseas, it would be better to consider what can be done to avoid this. Initiatives like the U.N. FAO’s Climate Smart Agriculture program offer much in the way of helpful information for dealing with the challenges that are already being felt. Just ask any of the 870 million people in the world — that’s 1 in 8 — who are chronically undernourished.

Our world is in transition. Our agricultural system needs to respond to the three simultaneous challenges of ensuring food security for a growing population, while adapting to the changes resulting from an increasingly unstable climate, and, wherever possible, contributing whatever it can to climate change mitigation. That will require food systems to become more innovative, more efficient in their use of water and other inputs, and more resilient to whatever changes and surprises an unstable climate might send their way.

RP Siegel, PE, is an author, inventor and consultant. He has written for numerous publications ranging from Huffington Post to Mechanical Engineering. He and Roger Saillant co-wrote the successful eco-thriller Vapor Trails. RP, who is a regular contributor to Triple Pundit and Justmeans, sees it as his mission to help articulate and clarify the problems and challenges confronting our planet at this time, as well as the steadily emerging list of proposed solutions. His uniquely combined engineering and humanities background help to bring both global perspective and analytical detail to bear on the questions at hand.

RP Siegel, author and inventor, shines a powerful light on numerous environmental and technological topics. His work has appeared in Triple Pundit, GreenBiz, Justmeans, CSRWire, Sustainable Brands, PolicyInnovations, Social Earth, 3BL Media, ThomasNet, Huffington Post, Strategy+Business, Mechanical Engineering, and engineering.com among others . He is the co-author, with Roger Saillant, of Vapor Trails, an adventure novel that shows climate change from a human perspective. RP is a professional engineer - a prolific inventor with 52 patents and President of Rain Mountain LLC a an independent product development group. RP recently returned from Abu Dhabi where he traveled as the winner of the 2015 Sustainability Week blogging competition.
Contact: bobolink52@gmail.com

3 responses

Most people have no idea as to the amount of CO2 in air. They believe that their must be large amount when true value is less than 0.04 percent. This amount can have only a very minor affect on climate.

We are EXITING AN ICE AGE. The water level has been 400 FEET lower than it is today. That’s right – FOUR HUNDRED FEET LOWER! I have myself witnessed places that used to be above water and are now below water when I go cave diving in Mexico. These caves have wonderful speleothems (i.e. stalactites and stalagmites). They are formed from the wet dripping action of water with minerals in it. The minerals are deposited as the water drips. This only occurs in a DRY environment (i.e. no water drips if it’s underwater!).

I have seen speleothems in these caves as deep as 70′ or more. Of course, the water level has been much lower than that in the distant past. If you want to see them just google “speleothems mexican cave diving” and look at some of those pictures.

So, for us to assume that the waters will not keep rising is absurd. By and large the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor and that dwarfs CO2 contribution by many many times over. Then, add to that the fact that we have only added a small amount of CO2 and you will realize that saying we are affecting global warming is like saying that a microorganism on a flea on a dog is controlling that dog. That is the level we are really talking about.